Flash Gordon Left Me The Keys

Sunday, August 03, 2003

Winter has come early for the polar bears of Moscow zoo: It's started snowing in midsummer.

The polar bear enclosure at the zoo has been experiencing localized snow showers - created by a high-tech compressor - while the rest of the city swelters in the sticky summer heat.

The six bears have Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov to thank for the unseasonable entertainment, according to Igor Yegorov, the enclosure warden.

Luzhkov saw other zoos around the world with similar snowmaking machines and decided he wanted one for the Moscow zoo. Now the bears are enjoying the closest thing to their natural habitat that they're going to get at this time of year.

The Russian-made machine, encased in an imitation rock face, sits above the enclosure and churns out snowflakes - or pulverized chunks of frozen water - which have formed what Yegorov called a "mini snow mountain."

"They love it, they play on it - especially the little ones," he said. "They slide down it on their backs, and the adults use it to clean themselves."

The Moscow zoo is often a source of the weird and wonderful. Two years ago, a team of British dentists came to the zoo to operate on walruses with life-threatening tooth infections, and last year a young female giraffe was flown in from Florida to hitch up with Moscow's lonely male giraffe, Samson.

Yegorov said the snow will be turned off when everybody gets fed up with it - a luxury the rest of Moscow's residents can only dream of in wintertime - but for the time being, the polar bears appear to enjoy it.

So do the zoo's visitors. Ilya Mashlyonkin, a 12-year-old who watched the bears play for 20 minutes, approved highly of the zoo's attempt at creating an authentic home for the bears.

"They're polar bears, they need snow," he said. "I'd love it if I were a polar bear."